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Veteran Friendly Fitness Organizations (VFFO)

HAVE OUR VETERAN ALUMNI REFERRED

TO YOUR ORGANIZATION FOR EMPLOYMENT:

VFCC refers our students to:

"Certified Premier VFFOs", "Certified VFFOs", "Verified VFFOs" health clubs--and in this order.

WHY  "VFFOs"?

With historic unemployment rates among our veterans, it’s encouraging to know that many organizations (in and out of the fitness industry) are becoming more aware of the value of hiring a veteran. This growing awareness has motivated many organizations to improve their efforts towards recruiting veterans and invest into marketing plans to recruit veterans. While this is good news for veterans, VFC College feels that fitness organizations should be able to do more than just hire veterans; we want them to help veterans be successful in their career.

In the past, there have been a few annually published rankings of veteran friendly employers (e.g. “Top 100 Military Friendly Employers”).  But for those of us working in the fitness industry, it's important to note that these rankings are NOT made by people who work in our industry.  For the most part (60-70%) these rankings asses veteran volume (i.e. “percentage of new veteran hires” and an organization’s “assets dedicated to hiring military” veterans. But there simply is NO expectation or evaluation on how well these organizations are helping veterans be successful in their new career with these organizations. And, we should also point out that less than 4% of these rankings are based on “retention efforts”.

These current ranking systems only tell you which organizations are making the largest investment to hire veterans; they are not telling you who are making the greatest effort to help veterans with retention and accommodation programs.

Ranking organizations as “veteran friendly” through these old methods makes as much sense as ranking the “Top 100 Customer Friendly Organizations” by how much they invest in marketing to their customers--not on how much they invest in serving their customers. Clearly, that would be ridiculous, and so is this method for ranking a veteran friendly employer.

Seeking to create viable careers for veterans in the fitness industry, VFC College has set and continues to advocate for a new standard, the “Golden Standard,” for a Veteran Friendly Fitness Organization (VFFO). 

WHAT IS A "VFFO"?

Fitness companies can now be recognized by VFCC as Certified "VFFO" if they are willing to hire and reasonably provide negotiable accommodations for veteran employees and veteran customers.  As an advocate for veterans in the fitness industry, VFCC coordinates individually with each organization for accommodations such as:

• Top priority for interviews and job placement
• Reserve and Guard rehire commitments
• Free memberships to ALL veterans (minimum of one month)
• Free Fitness Training session for Disabled Veterans (Varies from 3 -15 sessions)
• Paid apprenticeship programs  for VFCC students
• Basic PTSD & TBI Awareness Program for GMs and FMs working with veterans
• Veteran Scholarship Contribution for VFCC students

VFCC is working to create a database of unverified, verified, certified, and certified Premier VFFOs (e.g. Gold’s Gym Holding Corp.)  Organizations are categorized into one of these categories based on their confirmed commitment to help veterans.

Currently, we have over 2000 locations verified or certified as VFFOs.

HOW DO WE BECOME A VFFO?

If you are not currently verified or certified, please contact chris@vfccollege.org for more details on how your organization may become certified and registered in our global registry of VFFOs.

FACT SHEET & REFERENCE GUIDE FOR EMPLOYERS HIRING VETERANS WITH PTSD & TBI

Why Hire VFCC Veterans
at Your Health Club?

With more than 870,000 unemployed veterans along with another 150-200k added annually, due to normal attrition, there is no doubt that the need and the opportunity to help veterans is enormous. 
Now with historic government tax credit incentives in place, hiring veterans is    not only more important than ever,     it's more profitable than ever.

Veteran Valuation:

 Veterans are career-oriented and looking to start a full time career.

Veterans are solution-oriented professionals who have spent four or more years in the military focused on completing a mission, sometimes in spite of difficult personnel, faulty equipment or serious time constraints.

Veterans are experienced team leaders  who have already managed groups of other professionals, written performance appraisals, set developmental goals, managed training programs, and spent time reinforcing the goals of the organization to improve individual performance.

Veterans are courageously decisive. Veterans are often invovled with major decision making that involves reasonable risk. These experiences have helped them learn to trust their instincts, as well as their training, when big decisions must be made.

Veterans are accountable.  Regardless of task importance, accountability is forged into the mind of every veteran.  In fact, many veterans have been accountable for projects involving tens of millions of dollars in value. These veterans are conditioned to consider all aspects of organizational goals – direct and indirect.

Veterans are flexible and adaptable. Military work experience is the most challenging of jobs.  Quick and frequent relocations are standard, and members learn quickly the importance of flexibility – accepting changes necessary to fulfill their assigned mission.

Veterans are back ground checked and they've all had frequent random drug testing, annual dental exams and complete health assessments every 5 years. 

Finally, most veterans are of the ideal age and are in great shape. The majority of transitioning veterans are in their youth around 22-30 years old and they look the part. They are often very fit due to the extensive military training and weight management standards.